[the following is not a sponsored post, however I earn a miles referral bonus for every person who signs up using my link]

The demise of the dining card has caused much despair among food-loving miles chasers in Singapore. The HSBC Advance (as we know it) will cease to be from 31st May and the UOB PP Amex continues to play a game of cat and mouse with most applicants, as does the Citi Clear Platinum.

Fortunately, there’s a solution at hand. A few months ago I attended a beta testing event for Mileslife and met its founder, Troy (one of the original members of BoardingArea).

Troy told me more about Mileslife, a payment platform that lets you earn additional miles on top of your credit card, all for no additional cost. Read on for a special sign up offer for Milelion readers.

How does it work?

How it works is simple- you dine at a Mileslife-eligible restaurant and when the time comes to pay, tell them you want to pay through the Mileslife app. You’ll then earn miles not just from your credit card, but the Mileslife platform too. There’s no additional cost for paying through the Mileslife app.

So in the example above, if I use my DBS Altitude credit card and spend S$40 in total, I will earn S$40 *3 miles= 120 miles from the Mileslife app + S$40* 1.2 miles= 48 miles from my DBS Altitude card for a total of 168 miles (from now till 20th June you earn 3X the miles from Mileslife, so you’ll get 40*9 + 48= 408 miles total- see below).

Who can I transfer my miles to?

Although Mileslife lets you earn your garden variety SQ and Cathay miles, what’s interesting to me is that you can start building a base with other loyalty programs. There are a total of 12 different loyalty programs you can choose to earn with.

That’s a very extensive list, and mileage crediting takes place within 3-5 business days. No conversion fee applies.

Here’s how it looks like in your Krisflyer account (I got 5,000 miles for being part of the beta testing event that happened back in April)

Mileslife Launch Offers

As part of the Singapore launch, Mileslife is running a series of bonus miles promotions that I’d like to share with you-

Sign up bonus for Milelion readers

The regular signup bonus for Mileslife is 1,000 miles after a spend of S$39. However, if you use the referral code MILELION, you’ll earn 50% more miles, or 1,500 miles after a S$39 spend.

Triple miles on all restaurants till 20 June

From now till 20th June, Mileslife is offering a dining promotion where restaurants award 3X the regular miles. You can see the base earning rates in the spreadsheet below. So if a restaurant here says S$1= 3 miles, it gets S$1=9 miles from now till 20th June.

EDIT: There are some delays in the rollout, so you should refer to the Mileslife app for the latest list of available restaurants before deciding where to dine. Have removed the list temporarily to avoid confusion

100 miles for linking your FFP account

This one is easy- simply link your FFP account to Mileslife and you get 100 bonus miles. Remember that Mileslife automatically credits your miles to your FFP, so no conversion fees apply.

Things to note

I’ve been told by Mileslife that payments through the app will be coded as online transactions for professional services. This means you will not earn any 10X bonuses with cards like the DBS Woman’s World card. You should therefore use your general spending card with Mileslife, and not count on earning 10X online spending bonuses, at least not just yet.

I’ve also been told that although the app prices in SGD, the backend sees this as a foreign transaction, so you may incur foreign transaction fees and/or DCC fees, depending on your bank. Fortunately this is only temporary- Mileslife is working to get processed as a local merchant, and when that’s done the problem should go away.

Finally, if you use Mileslife to pay, you will not be able to use the restaurant’s own loyalty program. This is mainly a Crystal Jade issue- if you use Mileslife, you can’t earn Crystal Jadeite points.

All things considered though, I think this is a great opportunity for those of you who don’t have a dining card to earn closer to the 4 mpd mark on dining. Even if you have a dining card, there’s the potential to earn beyond 4 mpd with the promotions that Mileslife runs. I would imagine that as the restaurant list expands and new partners are signed up, you’ll be seeing some restaurants offering limited time promotions to drive business.

Mileslife will eventually expand in Singapore to offer miles on spa trips, theme park tickets and other recreational activities.

Restaurants want to drive customers to dine with them. I imagine mileslife charges them a % of the bill for every transaction and pays out some of that as miles to consumers. All things equal, if I liked two restaurants and one was on mileslife and the other wasn’t, i’d go for the one offering more miles. Hence my buying behavior has been altered for the equivalent of a “rebate” on my meal

Meh. Though the app was proudly advertised at the front counter, Goldleaf Taiwan restaurant had not started using the app when I paid for lunch 15mins ago. Plenty of apologetic looks. Not sure when they will or whether they were even trained. For a limited launch, this does not augur well. Caveat emptor.

The place was trained, but due to other reason, they did not live on Mileslife App, which is different than the list I gave to Aaron. Please drop a email at [email protected], I will sort it out for you

[…] Mileslife has launched in Singapore with strong points earning. It’s cool to see them grow beyond the Chinese market, since they were founded by a former BoardingArea blogger and probably the best person I’ve ever known as redeeming SkyMiles. […]

Ok glad to hear it’s working for someone at least. I guess at the start there’ll be all sorts of teething issues with it problems and untrained staff. Hopefully over the next month things will stabilise. Unfortunately I’m only back in sg post the 20th of June so no 3x for me

Just a PSA, went to Le Garden Seafood restaurant at Chinatown earlier today for lunch, hoping to take advantage of the $1=3 miles rate offered by the restaurant (+ the 3X miles pre launch). Spent $233 for 4 pax. Turned out that not only did the staff not allow us to use the app for payment (citing that there were issues with the network), they did not even allow me to use my Citi Premiermiles Visa card! (same reason given.. issues with network) Ended up paying with NETS… 233*9 + 233*1.2 = 2376 miles down the drain just like that…… Read more »

I was there for lunch today too and faced the same issue. The staff said they would try to credit the miles to me later. They took down by phone number and said they would update me. I’m skeptical about whether I’ll actually receive the miles. Kind of disappointed that my first time trying this app was a failure.

@Jun @Sk they just called us that they are indeed having network issue. What Jun mentioned is right, not just mileslife, any payment using network is not working today. We will credit the miles manually

Had a nice dinner at Le Garden Marina Square and spent about $230. The Mileslife miles were credited via the app and the transaction verified ok by the merchant. 3x for the pre-launch promotion is really substantial, and. It forgetting the bonus 1500 miles upon signup. In all took in more than 3600 miles, excluding the ones from the credit card. Thanks!

Hi Troy, I tried the app at crystal jade plaza singapura today, the entire transaction took too long and caused annoyance to the queue behind me. It’s mostly due to the process of having me (not the staff) key in the eligible and non eligible amount and then show it once to the staff. Then she had to log into mileslife on their end to see the transaction and then insist on matching the transaction number on both devices. To speed the process up, I suggest having a QR code for client app to read and auto fill in transaction… Read more »

bonus miles should be in the account together with base. As for user flow, we will shorten the process in the future, which user can scan QR, Also, the app is too new for merchant too, they have alert and all, should not taking that long, they are just still working on getting use to it.

Tried it out yesterday at serenity @ vivocity. I was prepared for some hiccups when settling the bill, but it was surprisingly smooth. The cashier was aware of mileslife, and on my side it was as simple as entering the bill total and my credit card details. Took about a minute for the transaction to be registered on the restaurant’s side. The number of miles was instantly computed on the app, and when I checked the next day miles were already credited to my FFP account. Talk about efficient! Now all they have to do is expand the number of… Read more »

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